


Feathers made of Ice

by Averia



Series: The Crimson Sun [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Dick Grayson-centric, Friendship, Gen, League of Assassins Dick Grayson, Nightmares, Survival, Tournaments, indoctrination
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:36:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29886063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Averia/pseuds/Averia
Summary: “There are times to make them suffer, Richard,” the man whispers as the claws plunge into the trashing faceless man. "Only you decide when that is."
Relationships: Dick Grayson & League of Assassins (DCU), Talia al Ghul & Dick Grayson
Series: The Crimson Sun [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2042602
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16
Collections: Dick Grayson Rare Pair Challenge





	Feathers made of Ice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [withthekeyisking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/withthekeyisking/gifts).



> Here it finally is, the (chronologically) first part of this series. The 2nd Prompt Quil gave for the 2020 Dick Grayson Exchange just didn’t leave me alone. So many possibilities!
> 
> The first chapters and parts of the series will largely concentrate on the indoctrination process and set up how the LoA operates in this universe. I want to go more into the eco-terrorist direction.
> 
> Nanda Parbat will not be quite as it seems at first. I have plans for it. It’s basically Ra’s personal sanctuary that he has been building for a couple of hundred years.
> 
> If you think you need any concrete warnings, please click on “more notes” below.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

Blood drip-drops onto the snow, adorning the Earth’s white gown with glittering rubies. 

His head feels heavy, dips forward. Shadows fill his vision. Thoughts cross his mind sluggishly. Stilted. 

Nothing makes sense. 

The breathing thundering in his ears doesn’t sound like his own. 

Slowly, his gaze rises from his roughed-up hands to the vast expanse of the snowy hills and farther still up toward the sun. His head drops, tilts into his neck, a weight he can’t hold – truly doesn’t try to – as he sways with the wind. 

Another trickle of crimson runs down his temple. It seeps darkly into the edges of his crisp red shirt. 

The sun glows golden, high above him in all its glory, contrasts starkly with the deep, deep blue. Its rays are as warm as the floodlights of the big top. Beneath Dick’s curling and flexing hands, the snow feels harsh and sand-like. Vapor seems to rise, and, suddenly, sitting turns unbearable. Sweat beads on his bronze skin; slides down his cheeks like tears. His ears ring with the hum of the crowd; a scream stuck just behind the veil, one as high as the drawn-out note of an opera singer.

His ripped jacket drops into the snow as he pushes off his knees. His hand appears bloody in his shifting vision. He hit his head he thinks. Maybe when he played with the older kids. They are so mean in Gotham. So uncaring.

His mom and dad will worry. They always worry so much. When he trains and runs and flies.

“Like a Robin,” Dick slurs. That’s what his mom always says and what she called him even before he could say a word. At least his dad tells him so every time he asks. 

A spike of pain runs through his chest. He doesn’t know where they are, and a cruel voice insists that they are gone. It digs its tiny teeth into Dick’s heart. But there is a whisper too. A whisper that tells him that they are watching and waiting for him.

Its reassurance brushes away the cold.

It makes him smile.

Surely, they are all right. His _daj_ and _dat_ have never left him alone before. Why would they now?

So, Dick walks. Up the hill instead of down, ever toward the sun. 

His family searches the heights. He learned to fly with five and never stopped. Now is not the time to waste a thought on stopping either.

But Dick stumbles, cold stone rough as his fingers curl around it. His nails catch against the uneven and rigid grey. It hurts. Hurts in a way few things do. Hurts like a rope snapping beneath his hands.

He stopped. He didn’t want to, but he stopped swinging beneath the red and yellow tent, watched his parents tumble down like marionettes with cut strings. 

Their bodies thumped on the ground. 

Red-black molasses glimmered in the sand.

Golden eyes took him to the rooftops. A metallic claw sat atop his head. 

Dick slides down the cold hard dirt, carves lines into the frozen soil. It guided him. A rough, calloused hand. Warm and gentle like his dad’s, as deep brown as his mom’s.

Dick reaches out for the hand now, feels a touch. As soft as a feather caressing against his skin. It tickles, and a laugh seeps out of his throat, past his lips so childish and gleeful Dick feels as if he is four again, waiting for his parents' show to end as he plays with the ostrich feather of Madame Frey. He hears the roar of a lion from far away, and there is a woman he spies through the painted feather. A curious on-looker he doesn’t recognize.

Hands touch his body. The tinkling of jewelry rings in his ears. 

The feather is gone.

There is no trailer, no tent. There is darkness. Complete and still. Until the cold grasps for him again.

Wind roars; whips across his face. The sun is leaving the horizon, bathing everything into golden and orange light, and Dick reaches out for it, his heartbreaking. It can’t leave him here. It has to take him with it. His parents are waiting! They’ll worry!

Voices whisper, words meaningless to him. His body is raised, and the snow falls from his skin. It clings to his lashes, though, has seeped into his bones. 

The cold, he will never lose again.

Green pools swim in front of his vision. Two fingers feel his pulse. His head falls to the side, rolls against the smooth and warm stone. It feels funny. He feels funny. A smile twists his lips, a giggle tries to emerge.

Scents are wafting around him that he has never smelled, others he knows deep down to his core, Thyme but one of them. A cup is placed to his lips by a strong if bony hand belonging to a man whose age Dick cannot grasp. His hair is streaked with silver, his mouth builds harsh lines. His eyes glow a vibrant green. He seems regal, yet like a sorcerer.

Warm ceramic touches his lips. Warm liquid fills his mouth, woodsy like the bark of a tree. The bitterness makes him shiver, and his body doesn’t stop even as the darkness cradles him anew.

It’s kinder this time, warm instead of cold.

And it's that warmth that lets him wake again, saves his life.

Awareness takes its time. There is an ache to his body that goes deeper than anything Dick has ever felt before. It resembles a fever, though. He has had those. His mom always makes… made soup and sang to him. His dad read him stories, acted them out while he lay beneath the thick covers of his parents' bed.

A dry cough escapes his throat. It feels rough and inflamed. Tears slip from his burning and swollen eyes, drop down onto the fluffy green pillow his head is bedded on. Another cough makes him curl together on his side. 

Soon after, a cool hand touches his flaming forehead, then helps him up. Dick shudders as the thick blanket falls away. The hands are as calloused and brown as his mom’s hands were, yet cooler in color. It makes him miss her so much more.

The spike of pain flashing through his chest overtakes the dull ache running through his body. Fresh tears slip down his cheeks as he remembers… _blood. Blood. Glittering rubies._

“Sah,” the woman says, hand on his cheek, so he faces her. Her eyes are as green as the ones that saved him. A little less vibrant. A bit gentler. Dick nearly gets lost in them; finds specks of brown as he threatens to slip back under. 

She speaks on, puts warm tea to his lips. It tastes better than the one he had before. _Child_ , she says, his mind finally clear enough to recognize the language. A language he just started to learn. _Because…_ his eyes shut, a headache forming.

_A sharp grin in the night._

He trembles, teeth gritting, and the woman wraps him tighter into the thick blanket, hand caressing through his hair.

“I don’t know,” Dick almost sobs, “what u’re saying.”

The hand stills for a moment, and Dick blinks up, but his lids feel too heavy to truly catch sight of her again. All he sees is the long, straight chestnut-colored hair that flows past her chin like silken draping.

“You’re American?”

Her surprised words are laced with an accent. Slight as it may be.

“No,” he claims as his eyes close fully, a shiver forcing him to curl up against her. She freezes at the touch. _Not the way they want me to be._

His bones rattle. The impact shocks him to his core, elevates him. Rage lights up his nerves. The sudden outlet is nowhere near enough. Just a simple taste. He has waited for this moment. And yet, the height begins to pass before Dick is ready, starts running through his hands like quicksand. Nothing can hold it. All he can do is stand above the man that killed his parents, casting a shadow. He didn't want a knife, nothing sharp. That’s not how his parents died. They died from the impact. He wanted to dangle Zucco from the rooftop after a beat-up and show him how it feels to fall.

Instead, Dick is standing still, and Zucco is lying, grasping at his chest, eyes wild. And Dick hates him. Hates him so, so much. Hates so much that the monster is dying while unable to comprehend Dick’s act of vengeance. It cuts Dick down to his core, leaves him seething and desperate.

It's supposed to be _his_ revenge.

Zucco is but a trapped, trashing animal in front of him. Fear and desperate survival flashes in his eyes, and Dick didn’t bring him there. _He didn’t bring him there!_

White-hot pain rips through his chest, and he flicks his staff down, aiming for the head with a strangled cry.

Blood splatters against his face.

And he is nine. He is _weak_.

He is cowering in the dirt, blood smeared across his face as he watches his parents’ murderer die while he screams his voice hoarse because the cruel, cruel anger ripping at his heart has been exchanged with fear. 

He doesn’t want to see him die any longer. He doesn’t want to prolong the stupid goon’s agony. 

He wants his life to be over just as much as he wants his parents back!

There are claws in his hair, metallic and sharp that keep him kneeling beside the spasming man. Blood runs over the ground, half smashed head burning into Dick’s sight as much as the clawing and the wild, wild bloodied eyes that only stare at _him_.

“Please,” he chokes out. His throat is dry with dust. His burning eyes are wet. "Please, I don't," he whimpers, red sand carving into the skin beneath his fingernails. Metal tickles a line across his wet cheek.

“There are times to make them suffer, Richard,” the man whispers as the claws plunge into the trashing faceless man. "Only you decide when that is."

The words echo in his mind even after he wakes. Dick stares at the ceiling, his head filled to the brim with thoughts. 

They go nowhere.

A cool cloth rests on his forehead. His cheeks feel warm. Everything does. 

Dick pushes up, shuffles back against the headboard. Restless. No more than a blink later a third cup of tea is held to his parched lips, and Dick drinks slowly, lets his eyes fall shut again. 

“Thank you,” Dick whispers even as he wants to scream. He tries to recall the Arabic words he learned and finds nothing. The woman nods, though, and Dick blinks at her as he realizes that she isn't who he expected. Her gaze never rises to his. Her hair, while long, does not shine as the other woman’s hair did.

Dick looks around with his eyebrows curled, hands grasping the blanket close. His heart skips a beat when he finds the woman standing a few feet away, behind the one that helped him drink.

“What’s your name?” the way she asks is simple; sounds almost nice. No one has asked for his name like that since his parents died. They were always detached, didn’t truly care. Even if they would have cared; they couldn’t have done a thing.

Dick tries not to think too hard about that last bit.

“Richard,” Dick says, and adds because he has to: “But everyone calls me Dick.”

“Richard,” she repeats. Dick flushes at her indifference, does not notice she is waiting for him to speak on. Even once he does, it takes him a long while to figure out what it is, she is waiting for.

“Grayson,” he adds hastily, head feeling ready to explode from embarrassment.

“But not American?” she asks, coming nearer, her gait slow and flowing as if she is walking on a cloud.

“Well…,” he says, fingers curling around the thick blanket that has pooled in his lap, and she nods.

“Not American.”

Dick wonders if she knows how it feels.

“My name is Talia al-Ghul.”

The name is said with meaning. Dick’s gaze drops to the maid, who has stepped out of the way, trying, or so it seems, to disappear into the tapestry.

“You may call me by my first name. Do you know where you are, Richard?”

Dick wrings his hands. “A mountain. I was…,” Dick doesn’t know. Too many memories wobble around in a dark he doesn’t dare to touch, but she speaks Arabic, and he tried to learn. If he were still in the states with the circus, why would he need to? “I was on a plane.”

“We found the wreckage,” she agrees, her eyes sharp. “You were the only survivor it seems. Certainly, the only one that made his way to the city of Nanda Parbat. It might just have saved your life.”

The last part is a whisper Dick barely hears. 

“Nanda Parbat,” he repeats slowly, lets the name melt on his tongue. There is a memory he can almost grasp. It was a nice day. The foot of a mountain. The claws glimmered. 

_Time moves differently there._

“You might have heard people talk,” Talia responds to his unspoken words, hardly surprised. Her attention never eases from his face. It's heavy. It makes him antsy. “Don’t pay their drivel any mind.”

Dick couldn’t even if he wanted to. He doesn’t truly remember. His memories are no more than fragments that are trying to piece themselves together in a language far too foreign to him.

“Your fever has gone down over the last days.”

Dick’s fingers curl more tightly around the blanket. _Days?_

“But you will remain in bed until your condition has permanently improved. The weather is too harsh for you still.”

And then? Dick wants to ask, remembering the way he chased the sun. What’s left? Why did you save me?

“A doctor will see you now.”

Dick nearly expects the man he saw. The one that saved him, but in a way, he isn’t surprised when someone else steps in.The man with the green eyes seemed more important. _Wise._

The doctor has no name. Or at least, no name is given to Dick. He is clinical but not unkind, addresses Talia, which is good because Dick barely understands a word. It’s not surprising then that the first thing Dick learns while under Talia al-Ghul’s care is the language they speak. A variation of Arabic that mixes modern and old; borrows words from Urdu and even Chinese. It’s confusing. Dick has no basis except for the few things his mind insists he should know.

His progress is even more stunted by the fact that he tires so easily.

It makes him feel like a baby. How many times did he tell his parents that he isn't one anymore? That he can fly with the best.

_Tonight, everything changes, right?_

“Very few of us were born here in Nanda Parbat,” Talia tells him during one of his language lessons. “Many join our community because they believe in a better tomorrow. They work and fight for the future they wish to see. That often means cutting off foul roots.”

The words stick with him. They don’t let him go. He knows how it feels to cut such a root. Killing Zucco didn’t bring his parents back, but the man will never murder anyone again either. He did something good.

Dick holds onto that thought.

Apart from Talia, only the doctor visits him daily, and the maid stays with him throughout the day even if she doesn’t always remain in his room.

Interacting with them is not at all what Dick is used to. The doctor is clinical to the point of appearing cold. The maid stays a safe distance away except to dress him in new clothes or provide his meals. Talia sits beside his bed with her spine straight and her chin high, never drawing close.

It makes Dick wonder if he has a disease that they aren’t telling him about. He almost brings himself to believe it. He has never felt so fragile and alone before.

But the man in his dreams touched him, and Dick begins to remember more than the claw. A hand that seemed so soft the first time he took it. A hand that brushed through his hair and pressed to his neck. He remembers curling around the muscular body, crying into the man’s chest with blood on his face. The golden-eyed man was so kind, helped him. Dick wonders where he is, why that man left him too.

Despite that, his dreams rarely end nicely. Sometimes they don’t seem to end at all. Then all Dick sees is blood and broken bones, his parents’ lifeless eyes. 

"Your crying has no purpose here, Richard," Talia whispers into his hair, holding him close for the first time since he woke as Dick claws into her fine clothes with all he has, wets them with his sorrow. "If you drown in your tears, you have to do so silently."

Dick doesn’t want to listen, but the next time his nightmares wake him, Talia doesn’t come. 

He smothers his cries from then on. Every night.

The fever returns or maybe just the stuffed nose. Whichever it is, Dick wakes with swollen eyes. Reality spins, but he parts his lips for the tea, tastes the same liquid he drank the first time.

The green eyes are as vibrant as he remembers. 

He likes them. He wishes he could dream of them instead.

Talia speaks. Somewhere beside him. He doesn’t know in which language, but he repeats her words as best as he can despite the aching of his throat and the pounding of his head, knowing there is a _thank you_ somewhere. 

The green gaze lowers to his face.

" _Master,_ " the man corrects, and Dick repeats it too.

He never sees his doctor again, but his condition gets better thanks to added nutrients and the pills he is given by a new sterner one. Walking around his room starts to feel less like a chore. 

The first time he cartwheels through the small space, Talia looks far from impressed, but Dick knows her better by now. He recognizes how relaxed she is. The knowledge lights his face up.

"We will go out today," Talia tells him one day in the middle of their lesson. He has been growing stronger, and he preens at the thought of finally leaving the stuffed room after six long weeks. "I will wait for you in the hallway. Don’t forget that we are at a high altitude. Dress accordingly, Richard."

Dick nods even if some words evade him. Talia expects him to catch up on their language fast, and more often he is good enough to guess what she means. The clothes he finds in the large closet are made of natural fiber. The sheep wool the jacket is made of still smells a little. It's not what he is used to but far from unpleasant. Strangely enough, it reminds him of the circus.

Talia waits in front of the door for him. Red fur lines her neck, and the long green robe embroidered with gold reaches all the way down to the floor. She looks regal.

It almost makes him forget where he is, but outside of his heated room, Dick can already feel the chill. It makes him hesitate. Something he is not proud of, but he almost died, and despite what he thought weeks ago, he wants to live. His parents wouldn’t want him to give up.

“I’m ready,” Dick tells her, and Talia nods. 

They make their way out of the building, greeted by frost immediately. The snow Dick expected is gone. From his studies and his own fragmented memories, Dick knows that Nanda Parbat is a city hidden in the Himalayas, but as he walks over frozen soil, he feels so far removed from his surroundings. For weeks he only knew his room, and where he remembers being before he woke is half a world away.

They walk along the outskirts of the city, see barely anyone but guards and what look like huntsmen and huntswomen. The ones in back clothing step out of their way, bow in greeting. By now, Dick has put together that Talia’s father is who others refer to as Master. It's no wonder that they have such similar green eyes.

A large field opens-up in front of them, still within the imposing walls of the city. It’s squared-off into smaller ones. People are training. Archers shoot their bows. Fencers take each other on. Falconers let their birds fly a few feet away.

Maybe the sight should worry him, but the memories repeating over and over while he sleeps make him intrigued rather than afraid. 

They watch them for a while. 

Calls echo across the field that Dick tries to understand. Some fights are more brutal than others. The wind works against the archers every time an arrow is shot. 

Dick sniffles when his nose begins to flow, some of the heat he thought he lost rising to his cheeks again. A shiver spans his body before too long. 

Talia glances at him but doesn’t otherwise move.

Dick’s toes curl in the thick boots. His gaze drops to the sparse grass. It often seems as if she doesn't quite know what to do with him. He worries she might just give him away all too soon, and where would he go then? He doesn't want to lose her too. He has lost too many in such little time, and he likes her. Talia is just awkward. He is sure time could make her less so.

"Why did you save me?" he asks with a scratchy throat, burrowing more into the dark furs lining his neck. It tickles.

For a moment, Talia says nothing, stands as still as a statue.

"You look a lot like my Beloved,” she finally reveals. “That you survived your journey up the mountain shows resilience. You most definitely are a good omen for our love and our future."

Dick bites his lip, doesn't know why it's wobbling.

"You survived something impossible, Richard,” Talia continues, head tilted just far enough to look at him. “Your resilience will serve you well. If I didn't believe in that, leaving you to die would have been kinder. You will enter the tournaments at my father’s request."

Dick frowns. "Tournaments?"

“A place in Nanda Parbat is earned. The tournaments exist to weed out the weak-willed. I will accept nothing less than perfection from you. It’s the only way you will survive."

**Author's Note:**

> (I'm not sure about how the series will be updated yet. Might be sporadically & out-of-order, but this will definitely be finished eventually.)
> 
> TWs for Survivor Guilt


End file.
